I remember the early days of the USB-vs-FireWire wars like they were yesterday, although Wikipedia reminds me that they were more than a decade ago (sigh). USB 1.0 arrived in 1996 but didn’t begin to see broad adoption until two years later with version 1.1. When FireWire 400 (aka IEEE 1394a)…

When GTX 690 was released, the driver used was 301.33 beta, according to the usual practice, upon the launch of relative reviews NVIDIA rolled out 301.34 WHQL driver which supported GTX 690, meanwhile the new driver is also the first one to support GTX 670 officially. Today when we ran GTX 690…

Now that Panther Point is in full swing, and perhaps Sandy Bridge processor stocks may start to dwindle in favor of Ivy Bridge, market segmentation of motherboards is all too critical. We have gamers (budget and enthusiast), casual users, audio enthusiasts, HTPC users, storage users, power users,…

The first quarter of Nvidia’s 2013 fiscal year is now over (it ended on April 29th), and the results are out (http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/Releases/NVIDIA-Reports-Financial-Results-for-First-Quarter-Fiscal-Year-2013-7db.aspx). And… they don’t look all that great. While the company is still…

Murphy was right. If something can go wrong, it will… eventually. Earlier this week, the water main connected to our house burst, submerging much of the laundry room in inches of water. The house’s main shut-off valve was little help, since the break was between the house and the main line…

Feeling the urge to procrastinate today? Hey, it’s Friday, and Bethesda and id Software have come up with a perfect time waster. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Wolfenstein 3D’s release, they’ve put up a full-featured browser port of the game, which includes all of the original levels and…

We’ve got a couple of pretty juicy deals for you all this week. The first is OCZ’s Agility 3 60GB solid-state drive, which is on sale for a scant $54.99 after a $10 mail-in rebate (http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-1800524-10487648?url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227725)—and…

CoolerMaster is a highly popular company among enthusiasts, with their reputation coming from their extensive line-up of computer chassis, power supplies and cooling solutions. However, lately CoolerMaster has been…

It’s proven: the thermal interface material (TIM) used by Intel, inside the integrated heatspreader (IHS) of its Core “Ivy Bridge” processors are behind its higher than expected load temperatures. This assertion was first made in late-April by an Overclockers.com report…

I finally made the transition to a notebook as my desktop last year, a move many had made years prior. Quad-core mobile Sandy Bridge and good SSDs made the move simple for me, but Thunderbolt eventually made it near perfect. With only two drive bays in my notebook (I ditched my optical drive so I…

Intel’s line of Ultrabooks now have a little bit of competition in the war to take back some of the ultraportable laptop market share from Apple’s Macbook Air. Earlier this week Hewlett Packard announced the Sleekbook, which is everything an Ultrabook is save for the inclusion of a Trinity APU from…

It’s finally happened… Antec has released a fully modular power supply. I for one, am pleased to see it, for this fully modular power supply happens to be the High Current Pro 1kW model. Which, by the way, is certified 80 Plus Platinum. Yes, folks, Antec saw what Seasonic has been doing lately…